The combination of microelectronic circuits and low power liquid crystal displays has led to a wide variety of portable electronic products. These products range from electronic watches to hand-held television receivers and laptop computers. Low power consumption is a critical requirement for each of them.
Despite their considerable utility in conjunction with integrated circuits, LCD displays have a number of shortcomings. In typical LCD cells the activated portion is darkened, representing a visual message, and the unactivated portion is transparent, constituting visual background. One shortcoming of LCD displays is the relatively low contrast between the activated portion and the unactivated portion. One approach to increasing the contrast is to backlight the cell, thereby producing a sharp visual contrast between the portions of the cell darkened by activation and the light shining through the transparent regions. Unfortunately, backlighting requires power. Even in so complex an electronic structure as a portable computer, the power used in display backlighting is the major drain on the system batteries.
An alternative approach to increasing contrast is to provide a reflector on the back of the cell to enhance contrast by reflecting light through the transparent regions. As in the case of the backlighted cell, the reflected light enhances the visual contrast. This approach also has shortcomings. One difficulty is that both the cell and the reflector typically have parallel planar surfaces. As a consequence, light reflected from the back reflector and glare reflected from the front surface of the cell are reflected in the same direction. Moreover, the greater the amount of light that is reflected from the back reflector, the greater the amount of glare reflected from the front surface. A second difficulty is that the cell is usually thicker than a single pixel of the display. As a consequence, a shadow of darkened pixel cast onto the reflector can be confused with the real image.
Various efforts have been made to texture the back reflector so that reflection is essentially isotropic (sometimes referred to as "Lambertion"). But because reflection is isotropic the light reflected to the viewer is necessarily diminished, and such displays lack the visual distinctiveness of a backlit display. Accordingly there is a need for a structure to enhance the contrast of an LCD display without consuming additional power and without aggravating glare.